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Vulgarity as Poetry

Let’s say you’re browsing Twitter and run across a sponsored post by John Bolton, the former UN Ambassador, one of the architects of the second Iraq war, that invasion launched by Bush and Company to purge non-existent weapons of mass destruction from Saddam’s stockpiles because, despite Iraq’s not having an air force or a navy that could deploy those non-existent weapons of mass destruction, Saddam posed a “present and growing danger.”

And let’s say that rather than financing this ruinously expensive, absolutely unnecessary war through raising taxes, the Bush Administration introduced legislation that slashed taxes, which depleted Clinton’s 280 billion surplus that cratered into a 1.2 trillion deficit under Bush.

Oh, yeah, the John Bolton sponsored post on Twitter that engendered the above screed:

“Barack Obama. Worst president ever? Vote here.”

Obviously, my first three paragraphs exceed Twitter’s 140-character limit; plus, let’s face it, the explanation is tediously verbose and doesn’t even address the outrageous hubris that Bolton exhibits, this man who has made a mistake so grievous that he ought to have blinded himself Oedipus-like and be tapping his staff across the Arabian Desert in an attempt at expiation.

How, you ask, can anyone successfully address the outrageousness of Bolton’s question in the constricted medium of Twitter?

Colonel Kurtz, what do you have to say about Andrew Otis Weiss’s response to Bolton’s tweet?

Yes, it is genius, a perfect putdown, more graphic than even a photoshopped picture, sound, sense, and image integrated into a barbarous haiku: you blood-splattered fuck.

The introductory “you,” accusatory, echoing that expletive for disgust we emit when coming upon fresh roadkill, the adjective “blood-splattered” with its connotations of careless butchery, the onomatopoetic splat, the thudding consonance of the terminal D-sounds (plus the word turd imbedded in splattered subliminally adding shit into the mix).

But then the clincher, the noun fuck. No, not dick – dick won’t do – no, not prick – prick won’t do – the vowels too short, too effete – but fuck – the abyss. You blood-splattered fuck, you casual slaughterer of half a million human beings.